Recent thefts and infrared cameras

[slag]

I live in a reasonably decent part of town built in the 1970's. Until this fall, we have had no issues with theft or anything. That changed around the time school started. My 5 year olds bike was stolen out of our side yard. Then about a month later, my neighbor across the street had some halloween decorations stolen and a few days later, all 5 of her pumpkins were taken. Fast forward to last week, the spare tire cover on the back of her vehicle was taken sometime during the night.

We are all getting a little pissed off here. We can think of no one who has it out for her or her family and feel this is nothing more than bored people seeing opportunities. With that in mind, before more stuff of mine gets taken such as Christmas decorations or what not, I'd like to get a camera system that works in low light situations and can see over my front yard and possibly to my neighbors house which is across the street. Any recommendations? I have a computer I can feed it all to, and it doesn't have to be wireless. I would like 1-2 cameras preferrably and can even mount one in a tree, relatively high up, to catch the person(s) in the act. I don't know where to shop or what to look for in a low cost surveillance/security camera package and hope that ATOT can point me in the correct direction.

 

[FelixDeCat]

They have lots of cameras at Frys.

 

[rsutoratosu]

i seen a lot of these systems, you can barely make out anything.. if you have any good show rooms in your area, check out HD survillance cams, you can make out good details.. except they'll be pricy

 

[KillerCharlie]

My house came with 4 Lorex color/infrared cameras installed by the last owner. The quality is actually quite good. Just having them on all sides of the house makes a difference - you can see their dim lights (red LEDs) as you approach.

My neighbor got broken into but I was untouched. Who knows if the cameras prevented it. The cops wanted to know if I had any footage that looked suspicious, but my cameras don't really see much of the neighbors house and it only catches the lower half of the vehicles driving by on the street.

Anyways, you can get decent stuff for relatively cheap.

 

[zerocool84]

Sounds like kids. Real thieves don't steal tire covers.

Build a kid scarecrow, an old man with a cane sitting in a lawn chair on the front yard. It'll even scare them off at night.

 

[phucheneh]

Er...flood lights? Eliminates low light issue, and scares away most petty thieves. Especially if they're motion activated and you hide the detector. Or wire an interior or porch light to come on when they do.

 

[rise]

I just went through a bunch trying some different models for a friend who wanted some good IR cams. Ended up using Lorex. No wireless cam (logitech, foscam, etc) provided the low light and higher res that he wanted. Ended up using a combination of these:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ls_o02_s00_i00
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ls_o04_s00_i00
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ls_o00_s01_i01

Oh, I was looking at a bunch of stuff on monoprice as well but ended up just getting Lorex once he saw the image and wanted that. When I do more, I'll probably try monpriceas they have a pretty nice selection it seems.

 

[Howard]

Minigun do the trick.

 

[Venix]

If you want to plug them into your computer, you want IP cameras. They connect to your home network and can be directly viewed/controlled from your computer, unlike normal cameras that require a DVR. With a POE (Power Over Ethernet) adapter you can just run one cable to the camera.

Check out http://www.networkcameracritic.com for camera reviews. I have a set of these that I got from Costco for $150/camera. I bought a set that came with a DVR, but the cameras also work well alone. You can get DVR software for your computer, or run an FTP server and setup the cameras to dump video files to it.

 

[skyking]

analog cams work fine on computers, using a capture card. I have a dozen of them in a busy facility along with 18 IP cams.
Slag, don't expect to see much or be able to prosecute somebody based on cams. If it makes you feel better being able to review what happened, then get them.
Typically, if you suspect person X is doing the stuff, you can see well enough to confirm that. If you have no clue who it is, they just about have to walk up to a cam to get a useful face shot. The details are just not there in a distant shot, and if you get a long enough lens for it, the Field Of View (FOV) gets unusable.
That said, it can be nice to identify vehicle types and colors of suspicious activities.

 

[slag]

Er...flood lights? Eliminates low light issue, and scares away most petty thieves. Especially if they're motion activated and you hide the detector. Or wire an interior or porch light to come on when they do.

I have flood lights and they illuminate the entire driveway. Even with those, a couple years ago, my truck (that was unlocked, bad me), was gone through and the contents of the console and glove box thrown on the floor.